Easter

Excerpt from Super Power and Secrets book one of Where Dawson Lives by H. Kaeppel ©2020

… she’d travelled to a lot of places, seen a lot of things, been impressed with some of the best in fine arts and live performance that the world could offer. She’d had goose bumps from Taps played by a West Point trumpeter, she’d been left fuzzy-eared from a bagpipe ensemble’s rendition of Amazing Grace. She’d seen the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel, the architecture of numerous cathedrals, and stained-glass windows that fused color and light like choreography.

It was her second Easter Sunday at Eisen’s – on that simple farm, in ordinary, boring Pennsylvania – that was the special one. She would always remember clearly that cold, damp morning, outside where there was no décor crafted by anyone’s hand. All there was, that year or any year, were a few volunteer horn players and too few ratty old hymnals to go around. There was no polished theatrical presentation, no food, no party, no building – be it ornate or simple. Just ordinary outside, just people, just a proclamation through old, old songs, of a triumph. A triumph that stood apart as the greatest in all human existence. At the macro level to save the world. At the micro level to be reckoned with by every individual who encountered it. The truth in it flooded down on her for the first time that special Easter, the truth in the hymns she’d sung in her childhood. The truth that mere words failed to fully articulate, that had to be experienced, that brought inexplicable tears.

… being taught these things as a child, then, years later, starting to gain an understanding of them was like having the house shake from a crack of thunder. Pretty real, pretty scary. At least thunder only lasts a moment. Compare that to an earthquake that shakes every dish and glass from every shelf so that each and every one of them breaks on the floor. Earthquakes make one crack of thunder seem very tame. She’d experienced plenty of Pennsylvania thunderstorms, and a few California earthquakes. That special Easter morning was an earthquake that shook her soul. Tears running down her face, …